A Matter of Taste

Natural Sweeteners Demand a Place at the Table

Sweetener caddies today hold a rainbow of choices for coffee drinkers.

White sachets remain the top pick but highly refined sucrose and raw sugar are for the first time finding serious challengers to their all-natural status. Artificial sweeteners, meanwhile, are losing ground.

Green-shaded packets, the color of choice for stevia and stevia blends, first appeared in caddy and condiment stands last January after the Federal Drug Administration recognized the stevia plant and its extracts as safe.

Since then stevia brands including TruVia™, PureVia™, SweetLeaf Stevia®, Stevia Extract In The Raw®, Stevita®, Sun Crystals® and non-stevia natural sweeteners like Organic Zero®, SUSTA® and ZSweet® have joined Equal®, Splenda®, Canderel®, Sweet’N Low®, Sweet Simplicity®, Sweet One®, Sunett® and NutraSweet® in the competition to satisfy America’s craving for a guilt-free coffee sweetener.

“Consumers choose one packet over another for many reasons,” explains Catherine C. Steffen, director of product management, Sugar Foods Corp. “But when choosing between pink/yellow/blue, specifically, it comes down to which taste profile the consumer prefers because they all are zero calorie and artificial,” she says.

“A new dimension is added when you offer a product like Stevia In The Raw®, which is not only calorie-free but also 100 percent natural,” says Steffen.

Raw sugar, while natural, does not address the needs of consumers on calorie-restricted diets or those who must limit sugar for other health reasons, she says. “Only the new stevia products address these consumer concerns with a 100-percent natural product,” says Steffen.

Calorie-conscious consumers are a very significant market segment, according to the Calorie Control Council. This diet-food industry group reports that in 2007, 194 million Americans consumed low- and reduced-calorie foods. “That's up from 180 million in 2004,” according to the council, whose members know that a teaspoon of sugar contains 15 calories compared to the zero in stevia and 5 calories in stevia blends. In addition to these calorie-counters, an estimated 23.6 million Americans now have diabetes and as many as 57 million more are pre-diabetic, according to American Diabetes Association.

Stevia Stands Out

Sales of stevia are expected to top $100 million this year, according to market research firm Mintel International. The category has experienced 500 percent growth according to The Nielsen Company, which recorded a 7-percent decline in sales of artificial sweeteners during the past year.

Stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar. A pinhead is sufficient to sweeten a 12-ounce cup of coffee. Customers, however, prefer a 2-gram or larger packet, leading manufacturers to add filler such as powdered cellulose or mix stevia with various sugars.

“All stevia is not created equal,” says Wisdom Natural Brands founder and CEO Jim May. His Sweetleaf Stevia® is extracted from stevia leaves without chemicals, using only purified water and nano-filters, and consequently has a glycemic index of zero as well as zero calories and zero carbohydrates (sugar scores 70 and Equal®, made with aspartame, scores 80, because of its filler).

“PureVia™ is made using 97 percent pure Reb-A, the sweetest part of the stevia leaf,” says Whole Earth Sweetener Company LLC Brand Director J.J. Betts.

“We have already seen PureVia's popularity with consumers seeking a healthy lifestyle at retail,” says Betts, who predicts the trend toward natural products “will redefine the sweetener category in the very near future.”

Rebiana, the patented ingredient in TruVia™ from Cargill was developed as a sweetener for the Coca-Cola Company, which uses it in Sprite Green, Odwalla and Glaceau Vitamin Water 10.

“Truvia™ tabletop has a unique crystalline form and proprietary natural flavor system,” according to Cargill. “One packet of Truvia™ natural sweetener provides the same sweetness as two teaspoons of sugar and is suitable for diabetics. The product contains erythritol a natural, non-caloric alternative to sugar that has been commercially produced and added to foods and beverages to provide sweetness, as well as enhance taste and texture. It is used as a bulking ingredient in the tabletop formula and has been part of the human diet for thousands of years as it is present in fruits such as pears, melons and grapes, as well as foods such as mushrooms and fermentation-derived foods such as wine, soy sauce and cheese.”

A third approach is typified by Stevia Extract In The Raw® and Sun Crystals® distributed by McNeil Nutritionals, LLC. These low-calorie blends of stevia and sugar reduce the calorie count of a packet by two-thirds, but the presence of sucrose in Sun Crystals and dextrose in Stevia in the Raw raises their glycemic count.

Food for thought Sweet Tooth In 1975, the average American consumed 70 pounds of sugar and four pounds of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS); by 2009 that had changed to 39 pounds of sugar and 45 pounds of HFCS. The average American ingests 17 teaspoons of HFCS daily, 10 percent of all calories in the U.S. diet.  Source: Foodlinks America www.tefapalliance.org

Cost Considerations

The wisdom of offering a natural sugar substitute seems obvious to a shop committed to fair trade, single-origin coffee and offering soy and organic milk, but what are the economics?

Stevia and stevia blends cost around a nickel per serving, high for a condiment given freely. Wholesale prices vary widely. Distributors are aggressively competing for market share, offering quantity discounts on 1,000-pack cartons that range in price from $32.49 to $49.99. Individual sachets cost from 3.2 to 5 cents. A 300-stick carton suitable for office coffee service and club stores retails for $15.99. Sugar packets, by comparison, cost 1.1 to 1.2 cents. Displaying stevia packets on the condiment table is like placing a bowl of Halloween candy on the front step. It empties in a flash.

Few shops build the cost into the price of a drink, so what shop owners notice first is an increase in their cost of ingredients.

“I think it is probably worth an owner absorbing the cost of stevia if they control the distribution,” says Ed Arvidson, author of “Coffee Business Success in a Turbulent Economy.”

“Someone taking a hand full of packets each day at 5 cents each could hurt!” he says. “I’d put a note on my condiment bar that “stevia sweetener is available from the cashier.” Alternately, baristas can draw attention to stevia by including it with the initial order. Stevia packets, for example, generally contain the equivalent of two teaspoons of sugar. Tossing two packets into a 12-ounce latte makes it undrinkable for some.

“Offering the highest-quality, best-tasting, truly health-promoting, totally green, environmentally sustainable stevia product will bring added revenue to the wise coffee shop owner,” says May. Stocking stevia demonstrates shop owners’ concern for customer health and well-being as well as the health of the earth and that will develop loyalty to the coffee shop, he says.

Tabletop promotions, buttons for employees to wear and menu notes should invite customers to request a packet of stevia, suggests May.

Assuming 12 customers a day use it, you may spend a couple of hundred dollars a year, but if that investment retains 12 customers, who come to your store because the competition doesn’t offer stevia, the income potential from those customers might be more than $18,000 per year,* says Arvidson. “That’s definitely something to think about,” he says.

Footnote

*Arvidson’s Math (12 customers x average purchase of $4.25 = $51.00 per day x 360 days - store closed 5 days per year = $18,360.)

Food for thought Child Obesity Children today who are obese face a shortened lifespan from weight-related diseases. In recent years, obesity of 2- to 5-year olds has increased from 5 to 12.4 percent; obesity in children ages 6-11 increased from 6.5 percent to 17 percent and from 5 to 17.6 percent for those aged 12-19. Despite these numbers 22.5 percent of families with children were at risk of hunger in 2008, up from 16.9 percent in 2007. Source: White House

Taste Trumps

Stevia is a member of the Chrysanthemum family of plants. There are 300 varieties. Eaten raw, it takes longer than sugar for the tongue to detect stevia’s intense sweetness which is 200 to 300 times greater than sugar. Depending on its purity, a bitter anise-like aftertaste remains. Manufacturers spent years and a lot of money isolating the sweetest parts of the plant to control its taste, which can be blended to complement certain foods. Since 80 percent of tabletop sweeteners are used to flavor beverages, coffee emerged as a target profile.

While formulating PureVia™ tasters adding it to Maxwell House coffee noticed an unexpected change in flavor. Kraft Foods Inc. had switched from a Robusto/Arabica blend to an all-Arabica coffee, says Betts. The company decided to create a formulation specific to coffee, Betts says. “It not only dissolves perfectly, but looks and tastes like sugar. Not all stevia-based products have been developed as precisely as PureVia, to truly optimize taste,” Betts adds.

That’s a matter of taste, counters Jim May.

“The purity and taste of SweetLeaf Stevia® wins the taste contest nearly every time,” he claims.

For specialty coffee shops seeking to convey a premium image, the additional cost of natural sweeteners is a small investment in building a high-end brand. The most important factor in choosing a natural sweetener is neither cost nor composition -- simply stir it into your offerings and you’ll know.